Sept. 15--As Hurricane Florence, now a tropical storm, crawls through the Carolinas, our reporters and photojournalists are on the coast. Their Friday reports from the coast are here.

You can follow them at @_andrewcarter, @joshshaffer08, @MarthaQuillin. @vizjourno, @travisheying, @duncanreporting, @hgsmoot

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Wilmington, N.C.: Finally, a grocery store

11:30 a.m. A crowd bordering on a mob scene formed in Wilmington Saturday as the first grocery store opened in four days, drawing 500 storm-soaked residents to push through the doors.

After two days in darkness, the city saw electricity return to a two-block grid on College Avenue. Hurricane Florence victims with Internet access saw the grocery's notice go up on Facebook. But most saw the line stretching around the side of the store and simply joined it.

As doors opened at 10 a.m., Harris Teeter employees loudly warned shoppers elbowing each other at the door to be civil, and that Wilmington police had nothing better to do than haul unruly people out of the store.

-- JOSH SHAFFER

New Bern, N.C..: A kitten, a photo, a flood

10 a.m. Both were wet. Both wore tired expressions.

A photo of Robert Simmons Jr. and his kitten has gone viral -- a moment that seemed to capture how thousands like Simmons are feeling as the storm slogs through the area, waters continue to rise, threatening houses and livelihoods.

Simmons recounted his story on Friday while a kitten peered through the top of his rain jacket. Simmons had taken the animal with him on the boat. The kitten clung to Simmons, as if a newborn clinging to his mother, and while Simmons spoke, the kitten mewed.

"We done been through Bertha, Fran, Irene, Matthew," he said on Friday afternoon, sitting in the small boat and ticking off the names of hurricanes that had come through his part of eastern North Carolina. "And this is the worst it's ever been, in this part right here."

Read more about the flood, Simmons and the kitten.

-- ANDREW CARTER

Myrtle Beach, S.C.: Alligator in the Neighborhood

6 a.m. Wind and rain weren't the only things Hurricane Florence left on the streets of the Grand Strand.

Friday afternoon an alligator was spotted in the Osprey Cove neighborhood off of S.C. 707 and filmed by resident Tracie Byrd.

"Well, hurricane update," she says in the video. "We have an alligator. Run gator, run!; Run from Florence."

The gator is seen crossing the road and running into a ditch as the effects from Hurricane Florence are felt in the area. Gators aren't the only animals gaining attention during the storm.

The Myrtle Beach Police Department posted a video on their Facebook page showing officers corralling ducks back into an enclosure after they escaped during the storm.

-- MEGAN TOMASIC

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